>effectively shut down the entire city

So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? N Korea is mostly rural, with most of its population barely able to get enough calories to eat. Pyongyang is a propagandist show-room and is full of connected party types. Your average N Korean doesn't live that lifestyle. This is all fairly well documented by various sources, mostly via the oral histories of defectors:

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0...

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0...

If you care to discredit these works, I will argue with you on a point to point basis. I have read both and other sources that describe the regime and everyday life in North Korea. Perhaps we can also get Dennis Rodman in here too but clearly you both are on the same page.

Sadly, I find North Korea cheerleading often to be a biased political position tied to the usual pro-China HN crowd that finds fault with everything the US/EU do, thus anything the US/EU are critical of, must be good and any criticism of these regimes must be "western propaganda."

This book gives an interesting take on it: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0...

According to it, the South considers the North so underdeveloped and backward that it isn't worth the cost of unification (which it estimates in the billions). Which makes sense considering that virtually the entire population of the North would require intensive medical care, subsidized housing, assimilation training, etc. Not to mention the cost of rounding up and trying the leadership for decades of crimes against humanity. It's an awful mess.

I'm waiting for camp 14 street map : http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0...

This is real north korea :-)

Did you say 'SOME' human rights issues? Please read this http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0...

And maybe then someone will take you seriously.

This book: http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/06... is an interesting read about NK's system of gulags. Because they practice generational punishment, there are North Koreans who are born into these camps and die there.